GET LAMP and Interactive Fiction

As time has gone on, more and more people who were aware when the project began have written me for status updates. That’s part of the reason for this weblog, of course, to put it all in one place. But their question is valid. Let me talk a little about what’s going on and what point I’m at.

GETLAMP.COM was actually registered in 2002; while working on my previous documentary I considered the idea of doing a documentary about text adventures and grabbed the name in case it disappeared or something. (I also registered TAKELAMP.COM later for this same reason.) But production of any meaningful amount didn’t begin until October of 2005. And that was mostly research, pulling in names and shaking trees, until February of 2006 when I actually began filming.

The previous film, I must confess, made me not much of a person to be around if you weren’t interested in hearing about the film I was making; I did almost nothing else for about four years. Coming into a project when you’re 31 and leaving it/entering a new phase of it when you’re 35 is a litter sobering. So this time I was sure to get other things done at the same time as this film. Still, you probably should have expected me to talk about this film as much as anything else if you struck up a conversation.

Primary filming went from February of 2006 to February of 2008. After that, I had about 110 hours of footage, spanning about 80 interviews. From there, I have spent months on end clipping it down into about 20-30 hours of footage of phrases, comments and paragraph by people. Each of these represents a complete idea by an interviewee. When all was said and done, I had about 5,000 clips. Now, I am assembling those clips. This is taking some time as well. I’ll discuss more of this process in the future. Editing is fun.

That’s where we are now. I had hoped to have this done on a schedule that has slid and slid, due to forces both inside and outside the project. None of them have been bad and the project is benefiting from the time. But I know people who want to see this have been waiting, and it must be annoying; hence the weblog.

Welcome to Taking Inventory, the weblog related to the documentary GET LAMP.

Created in November of 2008, this weblog covers a production that has been going on since 2006, that of creating a documentary about interactive fiction, text adventures, non-linear storytelling, and a host of other related subjects. The director is myself, Jason Scott, a historian and archivist who previously worked on a documentary about Bulletin Board Systems called BBS: The Documentary.

This weblog will cover both the end of production of the documentary and post-release events and issues. I’ll also be talking about interactive fiction in general, pointing to other locations for more information on this fascinating subject, and answering questions as they come up.

The most common questions are the estimated time of the finished documentary and what’s in the final collection, and I’ll be answering those as I go in later entries. Until then, please check back or subscribe to this news feed and I’ll be sure to keep you updated with production information, behind the scenes photos, and the vast amount of stories I’ve picked up in the past few years. Thanks!